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On March 26, 2015, Los Angeles Opera presented Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). The Ian Judge production featured jewel-colored box sets by Tim Goodchild that threw the voices out into the hall. Only for the finale did the set open up on to a garden that filled the whole stage and at the very end featured actual fireworks.

Gotham Chamber Opera’s latest project, The Tempest Songbook, continues to
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that the company has made its hallmark. The results were musically and
theatrically thought-provoking, and left me wanting more.

Nixon in China is a three-act opera with a libretto by Alice Goodman and music by John Adams that was first seen at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987. It was the first of a notable line of operas by the composer.

It is thanks to Céline Ricci, mezzo-soprano and director of Ars Minerva, that we have been able to again hear Daniele Castrovillari’s exquisite melodies because she is the musician who has brought his 1662 opera La Cleopatra to life.

Puccini and his fellow verismo-ists are commonly associated with explosions of unbridled human passion and raw, violent pain, but in this revival (by Justin Way) of Moshe Leiser’s and Patrice Caurier’s 2003 production of Madame Butterfly, directorial understatement together with ravishing scenic beauty are shown to be more potent ways of enabling the sung voice to reveal the emotional depths of human tragedy.

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The Nash Ensemble’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations at the Wigmore Hall were crowned by a recital that typifies the Nash’s visionary mission. Above, the dearly-loved founder, Amelia Freeman, a quietly revolutionary figure in her own way, who has immeasurably enriched the cultural life of this country.

On March 7, 2015, Arizona Opera presented Dan Rigazzi’s production of Die Zauberflöte in Tucson. Inspired by the works of René Magritte, designer John Pollard filled the stage with various sizes of picture frames, windows, and portals from which he leads us into Mozart and Schikaneder’s dream world.

There are some concert programmes which are not just wonderful in their execution but also delight and satisfy because of the ‘rightness’ of their composition. This Wigmore Hall recital by soprano Carolyn Sampson and three period-instrument experts of arias and instrumental pieces by Henry Purcell was one such occasion.

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At long last, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny has come to the Royal Opera House. Kurt Weill’s teacher, Busoni, remains scandalously ignored, but a season which includes house firsts both of this opera and Szymanowsi’s King Roger, cannot be all bad.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature is an international database for
musicological and ethnomusicological research, providing abstracts and indexing
for users all over the world. As such, RILM’s style guide (How to Write
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those of more generalized style guides such as MLA or APA.

Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland returned to the Barbican,
London, shape-shifted like one of Alice’s adventures. The BBC Symphony
Orchestra was assembled en masse, almost teetering off stage, creating
a sense of tension. “Eat me, Drink me”. Was Lewis Carroll on hallucinogens
or just good at channeling the crazy world of the subconscious?

Dominic Cooke’s 2005 staging of The Magic Flute and Richard Jones’s 1998 production of Hansel and Gretel have been brought together for Welsh National Opera’s spring tour under the unifying moniker, Spellbound.

Gaetano Donizetti and Malcolm Arnold might seem odd operatic bedfellows, but this double bill by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama offered a pair of works characterised by ‘madness, misunderstandings and mistaken identity’ which proved witty, sparkling and imaginatively realised.

Saturday, February 28, 2015, was the first night for Los Angeles Opera’s revival of its 2009 presentation of The Barber of Seville, a production by Emilio Sagi, which comes originally from Teatro Real in Madrid in cooperation with Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlos. Sagi and onsite director, Trevor Ross, made comedy the focus of their production and provided myriad sight gags which kept the audience laughing.

Reviews

16 Mar 2008

MOZART: Don Giovanni

This an intriguing two-disc DVD set. The primary disc is the opera itself, while the other disc is a film called “Adieu Mozart” that tells us about the unique relationship Mozart had with the City of Prague.

The setting for the opera is The Estates Theater in Prague. It existed in
Mozart’s time where he conducted two world premieres — Don Giovanni
and Clemenza di Tito. Between 1983 and 1991, the theater was
reconstructed to look just as it did in Mozart’s time.

The opera as we see it on the DVD’s is a film of the first opera
performed in the reconstructed theater. There is an interesting aspect of the
film of the opera production that seeks to connect the present production to
the past and vice versa. In a day where we see opera houses and directors
looking to update and to be more innovative with traditional operas, there is
still another way of touching the audience with the historic and respected
works of this master composer.

The first scenes of the film are of Andrei Beschasny, who is our Don
Giovanni, walking to the opera house through the cobblestone streets of
Prague. He is wearing a navy blue jogging suit and white tennis shoes and has
an apple in his hand. The first scenes of the opera, following the overture,
show Beschasny in full makeup entering the stage from the rear and the action
then begins. We have made the transition from now to then.

For the next two and a half hours I was thoroughly entertained by a
well-done production of the opera with all the lush period costumes and sets
that might have been similar to what Mozart himself used. In the scene where
the Commendatore ( sung by Dalibor Jedlicka) interrupts the liaison between
the Don and Donna Anna we see a shirtless Don who is indignant at having his
pleasure cut short. The death scene continues as he struggles into his red
shirt and then kills the Commendatore.

Ludek Vele is an amazing Leporello. I hasten to mention here that I am not
familiar with any of the singers so this was an adventure in listening to
them and having no preconceived ideas of what they should sound like. But,
back to Vele. He has a nice baritone voice, a bit more rugged sounding than
that of Beschasny, which works well. He is a convincing actor who leaves no
doubt about his conflicted relationship with his master.

Nedezhda Petrenko is Donna Anna. This is a soprano with a voice that can
go shrill at times but is not unpleasant to listen to for the most part. She
had a good grasp of the role. Shock at first when her father is killed and
then determined to bring down the perpetrator. Ottavio and Elvira sung by
Vladimir Dolezal and Jirina Markova, respectively, made a good couple.
Markova is a passionate singer who I found engaging.

If there was, in my opinion, a weak link among the singers it was with
Zerlina and Masetto ( Zdenek Harvanek and Alice Randova). There did not seem
to be a good “connection” between these two and until the very end I
thought they were singing “at” one another rather than “to” one
another.

The banquet scene, always a highlight for me in Don Giovanni, was
exquisitely done. The opulence of the Don’s palace was all there and the
tables were laden with food. The production does a very good job of showing
how the mood of the people changes from the beginning of the scene when they
are all in “banquet” mood until the end when the Don has to escape.

But as we all know Don Giovanni is not to be deterred from his need to
conquer even more women and add to his “catalogue”. The opera proceeds
with great skill and lots of good emotional singing until its inevitable end.
Anyone watching this production cannot help be intrigued by the timeliness of
this old opera and its relevance to today’s audiences. Mozart was the
rarest of men…one who gave us his very soul in his legacy of music.